I believe this is part of Bloomberg’s strategy to destroy NRA, because if he can turn Virginia into an anti-gun state, the real gun folks at NRA will be hard pressed to live there, and after a while NRA will be staffed by political hacks who aren’t shooters and couldn’t care less about promoting actual gun rights. Think about it. How many of you would take a job in Maryland if you couldn’t live in Virginia? NRA will be no different.

This is huge money for a state senate race, or as Donald Trump would say, “Yuge!” It would be a handsome sum for a candidate for Governor, or for a U.S. Senate seat. It is absolutely unprecedented to dump 700 grand into one State Senate race like this. But $700,000 is pocket change for Bloomberg.

The race is expected to be one to watch, and it will be a key race for determining whether the the GOP manages to retain control of the upper house in Virginia. The GOP is in a tough position, because out of six Senators retiring, four are Republicans. They have more to defend. I believe Bloomberg is trying to send a signal here:

If his candidate wins, he gets a step closer to his goal of turning Virginia into an anti-gun state like neighboring Maryland. It will bolster his reputation immensely. It will make Republicans in marginal districts very very fearful.

Even if he loses, he signals to anti-gun Democrats that he’s willing to spend big. Like I said, this is huge money, and it will make a lot of other up-ticket Dems wonder what he might be willing to spend on their races.

He can still strike fear into the hearts of state and local GOP politicians in challenging districts. If he’s willing to spend this kind of money in a race, it could make some of them back away from gun rights in fear of what that money can do to persuade less informed voters.

This kind of money, to be honest, even if he loses, he still wins. It might not be fair that one rich asshole can come in and boost a whole movement to challenge millions of middle-class grassroots Americans, but the fact is that in this country, money talks, and the more money you have, the louder you can talk. Bloomberg has a lot of money. Seven hundred grand is nothing to him. So what can you do?

And speaking of volunteers, if you live anywhere near that district, I’d offer to help out on the ground. Grassroots is the only tool we have to counter Bloomberg. We can’t outspend him, because our movement doesn’t have any rich billionaires of our own that can afford to spend that kind of coin.

Donate to NRA’s Political Victory Fund. This is our collective pool of money to challenge Bloomberg. I will tell you for certain, NRA cannot afford to match Bloomberg’s spending in this one state senate race. NRA-PVF has about 8.4 million dollars of cash on hand right now. Mike Bloomberg’s net worth is 38.5 billion.

Get the word out that Everytown = Mike Bloomberg. It’s all him. It’s all his money. It’s one rich billionaire trying to hijack Democracy from ordinary middle-class Americans. Bloomberg is not a likable guy. Part of the Everytown move is to distance the organization from it’s founder and pocket book, because they know this. Hand Bloomberg around Everytown’s neck like the albatross he is, and make them wear the unpopularity of their funder.

Bloomberg’s money is a big deal. Gun control organizations have always struggled to raise money, and this is more money than the movement has ever seen. It’s more money than we could ever hope to raise, and it’s aimed squarely at our rights. Our only hope is to counter his money with grassroots energy, and we have to make that happen in the upcoming Virginia elections.

Looking at the @GlenSturtevant twitter feed, the hot button issue in the race seems to be more related to environmental politics and not guns. Let’s not forget that money dump in the VA Governor’s race from one single-minded environmentalist, too.

Gun control is a big bowl of nothing. While I like the strategy of attacking the man at the center of the financing (Bloomberg), I don’t know that most people know or care who he is outside of NYC and LA. Once people get a better idea, it probably helps us, but I don’t think gun control is a big issue in these races. I wouldn’t spend ON Bloomberg specifically. I would spend DESPITE him.

Disclaimer: None of this takes away from the fact that $700,000 IS a large sum of money in politics. And with the present system, the only way to counteract the message is to find $700,000 worth of “free speech” to match.

So? Just because it’s Bloomberg’s money doesn’t mean it has to be spent campaigning for gun control. But, just like McAuliffe, if Sturtevant’s opponent Dan Gecker wins, he’ll be beholden to Bloomberg and willing to do his bidding. Not to mention that he was probably already vetted for his willingness to bow to King Bloomers long before being put forth as “McAuliffe’s” hand picked candidate.

But what I was getting at was that it’s one big folly of a campaign strategy to center on Bloomberg’s influence like I read consistently in Sebastian’s articles. The average voter has no idea (and little interest) who finances their candidate and where the financiers stand on the issues specifically. Sure we have a myriad of stuff on Bloomy that would make the average Virginian cringe, but so what?

Between looking at this post and these comments, an even simpler strategy ought to be employed whenever a single candidate receives such large funds from any person.

The opponent should simply say, “Are you going to vote for me, or vote for Mike Bloomberg [or whoever donated the big sum of money]? Because by accepting that huge sum means my candidate is so deeply bought and paid for, he might as well be a clone of Bloomberg.”

In theory, politically, I don’t have any problem with such a big donation; however, if a local candidate received such a high percentage of his funds from one source, I would consider the source to be that person’s puppetmaster, and if I don’t like the puppetmaster, I’m not going to vote for that person. Heck, I might not vote for that person because I don’t like puppetmasters!

Now that I think about it, anyone up to making a short ad, with Daniel Gecker being controlled by Bloomberg, saying things like “I’m for gun control! Let’s ban sodas! I’ll do everything Mike Bloomberg says!”? Because now that I think about it, when someone accepts such a large sum of money from someone like Bloomberg, every policy, however inane becomes that person’s policy too.

“It nearly equals the $772,000 Sturtevant had raised from the inception of his campaign through September in the four-way race that also includes independent candidate Marleen K. Durfee and Libertarian Carl R. Loser.”

I apologize for this, and I really wish the Libertarian party could actually have a meaningful presence in politics…but I can’t help but be a little amused by the fact that a Libertarian candidate has the last name Loser. (Having said that, I would be more than happy if he didn’t live up to his name!)

VCDL ought to be on this. Gun control and tolls are big issues. Also this is off off year election the Democrats need 30 % turnout to get over the hump. They need to win all their seats plus two. This is a major effort GOP has also put in about 600K on the race. Right now Surdevant has more money on hand. I made a small donation